September ends with a brand new version of OS X, a little earlier than originally expected. Seeded to developers in June, OS X El Capitan is the supposed bug fix update that cleans up the glitches and performance issues of Yosemite. But that’s a superficial view that is not entirely true. Although the number of new features and enhancements are fewer than its predecessor, there’s enough going on to make this an extremely useful upgrade, particularly under the hood.

Supposedly this release is in keeping with the usual approach taken since OS 10.5 Leopard and OS 10.6 Snow Leopard, which is to offer a major release, and follow it up with an upgrade to clean up the glitches and do some internal plumbing improvements.

For El Capitan, Apple has followed in the spirit of iOS 9 by switching the system font from Helvetica Neue to San Francisco. For the iPhone and iPad, it makes sense, since it provides much cleaner text in smaller sizes. That’s true with El Capitan as well, but the level of improvement is not quite as noticeable.

The actual feature improvements are decent enough. Spotlight gets plenty of attention, by making the search respond to plain language requests, same as Proactive Siri for iOS 9. The search window is also movable, and you wonder why it took so long for Apple to do something so practical.

Notes matches up its iOS counterpart by giving you more formatting options. It brings it closer in concept to Microsoft OneNote. You can also add a photo, video, URL or a location from Maps to coordinate your note taking. If I actually used Notes, I’d care. I’m not at all that interested in the Split View feature, the side-by-side window management scheme “borrowed” from Windows 7, although it appears to have a lot more value on the latest iPads running iOS 9.

There are also enhancements to Mail, Photos and Safari among Apple’s apps. Maps gets the same enhancements as its iOS counterpart, with transit information from 10 cities and more to come.

While some might fret over the iOSification of OS X, the similarities make sense. Apple wants you to be able to share your Notes and Photos, and start the trip that you planned on your Mac on your iPhone or iPad. This is the sort of system integration that is uniquely Apple’s.

While an operating system refresh has usually resulted in slower performance on older hardware, Apple appears to be making an effort to make it more responsive in many ways. They boast of app launches that are up to 1.4 times faster, app switching and the display of the first messages in Mail are up to twice as fast, and opening PDF files is up to four times faster. Graphics performance is also said to be much snappier because Apple has added support for Metal, an enhancement that previously debuted in iOS 8. But it’s not available to everyone. It appears that only Macs built in the last two or three years have the graphics hardware to support Metal. Otherwise, El Capitan runs on the same Macs as Yosemite, which include Macs up to eight years old.

Indeed, the extensive range of hardware support means that, if El Capitan delivers credible performance on older hardware; essentially those with 64-bit Intel chips. You aren’t forced to go out and buy a new Mac, although it’s not just Metal that requires recent hardware. The Handoff feature, part of Continuity, needs a Mac with Bluetooth LE hardware, essentially models no more than three years old.

But the requirement for recent hardware isn’t some dirty trick from Apple. It’s a matter of making Metal and Handoff work properly, and Apple isn’t going to omit new features because of the limitations of older Macs.

Overall, El Capitan is a creditable update. I’ve lived through the beta process and the usual glitches appear to have been resolved. Mail works well enough even with thickly packed folders, although I’ve heard of some who have encountered slowdowns. But there’s nothing wrong with just keeping the size of your Inbox as small as possible on IMAP accounts. Large Inboxes can cause a heap of grief.

The only real problem I’ve encountered involves an important audio editing tool known as The Levelator. It uses a sophisticated algorithm to adjust volume levels on your files, and it can save you hours of work, particularly when you are managing several participants on Skype. They all come through on a single channel, which calls for lots of manual labor if you have to set different volume levels for different people. Levelator figures it all out, but it is not compatible with El Capitan, and I had been forced to use the Windows version via a Parallels Desktop virtual machine.

So the developers stopped maintaining The Levelator in 2012. Fortunately, Adam Engst at TidBITS discovered a solution that he posted for your edification. It involves copying a file from Levelator’s Package Contents to another folder, usually hidden, on your Mac. Just follow the steps carefully. It takes at most a couple of minutes. Restart your Mac and Levelator will be restored to all its glory. The main limitation is that it will have to be duplicated on every Mac with OS 10.11 on which you intend to run the app. It’s possible a new system installation might wipe it clean. But I’m not assuming any such thing. I’m just happy that one of my most essential tools works again for me without hoop jumping.

As for El Capitan: It’ll make your Mac faster, and more stable. Although some apps may need upgrades — and you should check first — it gets my wholehearted recommendation. Of course, if you want to avoid the usual point-zero glitches, wait for OS 10.11.1. It’s reportedly already under development.

In keeping with expectations, Apple reported that 13 million iPhones were sold the first weekend. This is a record, and not just for Apple. It’s a record for the industry. Despite being the darling of the tech media until profits came crashing down, Samsung never came close to Apple when releasing new Galaxy smartphones. In short this should be an incredible achievement, right?

Well, not to Wall Street. On Monday, Apple’s stock price was down. In fairness, so was the rest of the market, so it may have just been part of the trend. But you’d think news that portends great success for an alleged “minor” iPhone revision would be reason for investors to want to buy more Apple stock. But it rarely seems to work out that way in the real world.

And, of course, when you look at the internal changes in the new iPhones, the enhancements are quite extensive. Preliminary benchmarks reveal results that actually approach those of recent entry-level Macs. The camera is capable of near-professional results, and the reviews of 3D Touch are mostly off the charts. If that’s a minor refresh, then the standards for minor are screwy.

In all fairness, this year’s sales figures include China. Last year’s didn’t, and that could certainly count for a decent portion of the sales increase, but I wouldn’t care to guess how much. It’s also clear Apple is rushing the new iPhones into lots of other countries in the next few weeks.

Overall, financial analysts appear to be more bullish on Apple. Wells Fargo continues to award Apple an “outperform” rating, with an expected stock price increase to between $125 and $135. Gene Munster, of Piper Jaffray, set a price target of $172 with an “overweight” rating. Clearly the situation is far better than in the past few years, where the skeptics reigned supreme.

Still, the critics will continue to claim that Apple is mostly a smartphone maker, and thus you shouldn’t take any of their other products seriously. Of course, Apple was once regarded as strictly a Macintosh company, and with growing Windows domination in the 1990s, Apple’s prospects for success were viewed as extremely dim. Funny how things have changed.

As most of you know, Macs are doing better than ever. Sales increases continue to outpace the PC industry, which is on the decline. That situation probably won’t change that much with the release of Windows 10. Although Windows 8 was a disaster, it’s not as if anyone has to buy the new OS to get its replacement. It was made available free to PC users running Windows 7 or 8/8.1, so there’s no incentive to go out and purchase a new PC unless you absolutely need one. Meantime, Apple is getting more corporate clients, and offering Macs to IBM employees is a plus.

At one time, it was thought the presence of tablets would essentially kill the market for PCs, but that hasn’t been the case. Tablets occupy that ephemeral spot between smartphones and PCs. To some, it’s perfect, although phablets clearly grab some of the market formerly owned by tablets. But it’s not quite the PC replacement it was once touted to become. There are things you just cannot do on an iPad, or maybe you can but not quite as flexibly.

The iPad Pro does make a case for using a tablet as a productivity tool. Apple Pencil has the potential to become one of the best of the breed, and can be used for high-endcontent creation and other chores where a touchscreen is, itself, not sufficient to get the job done. The attachable keyboard is useful, but it doesn’t seem to be the sort of device you’d place on your lap. Other than the things you can do with an Apple Pencil, a real laptop would appear to be more suited to productivity tasks. The iPad Pro doesn’t seem to change that.

As I’ve written before, my experiences with the iPad have been hit or miss. It works well enough, and my wife adores hers. But I cannot record my radio shows on an iPad because there’s no way for a sound capture utility, such as Audio Hijack, to function on an iPad due to Apple’s sandboxing limitations. If that changed, maybe. I could, however, see editing an audio waveform on an iPad, assuming I had full control of file location and management for handling my radio shows, which consist of 12 separate audio files. Well, that’s another problem.

All things considered, perhaps tablets will ultimately achieve a steady sales rate once things settle down. Future improvements in iOS will probably add additional productivity options, and maybe attachable keyboards will be offered that aren’t so clunky to use. Regardless, there’s no evidence to indicate the iPad won’t produce decent revenue for Apple.

Apple Watch? No idea where it’ll go. It’s too early in the game, but when it becomes able to perform all functions without being tethered to an iPhone, it may really come into its own as a possible smartphone alternative for those who don’t need the larger display. Or maybe the fitness and alert functions will be sufficient.

I do expect Apple TV to do well, but sales will never approach those of a smartphone. But selling ten or 20 million a year would be a pretty good place to be, particularly as it makes customers still more dependent on the Apple ecosystem and thus more inclined to stick with Apple for everything that Apple makes.

Well, maybe not the Apple Car, if such a beast ever appears.

As of September 19, Apple reported that, based on visits to the App Store, some 52% of activated devices were using iOS 9. I presume a hefty portion have already upgraded to iOS 9.0.1. This news was sufficient to earn an Apple press announcement, and it’s no wonder. But it also was greeted by skepticism in some quarters. You see, third-party companies that record online metrics, such as Mixpanel Trends, were reporting a far lower figure.

Usually, it’s the reverse. Apple’s numbers tend to be conservative. Now it may well be that the figures were skewed by the fact that more people accessed the App Store on multiple occasions to download updates to be compatible with iOS 9. The number of changed apps, to some, appeared to be far larger than were available after iOS 8 arrived. The App Store gathers these numbers based on the OS a device is running when it contacts the store.

In my case, I counted 28 app upgrades since installing the release version of iOS 9 on September 16th. Some involve the same app that required additional changes. But I also downloaded a bunch during the time I was running iOS 9 betas, so this issue becomes a little more complicated.

Continue Reading…

Earning an honest living is more and more difficult, so it’s understandable that there will be more and more outlaws. Some of those outlaws will contact you via email, and clicking or tapping a wayward link can get you into a heap of trouble, particularly if you attempt to login to a site that you believe is your bank or another firm with whom you do business.

But it’s not just wayward links, or phony web sites. There are also purveyors of telemarketing phone calls, where someone calls you out of the blue, and in my case it’s usually when I’m preparing to have breakfast, or relaxing for the evening. Sometimes they will tell me I’m eligible for a low-cost loan, or that I’ve won a free vacation. But those vacations are seldom free, since you usually, I gather, have to pay a service fee and maybe endure a pitch for some fake real estate offer in exchange for a few days at a resort somewhere.

Now perhaps someone out there who manages those robocol lists realized that I’m involved in the technology business, but clearly doesn’t have a clue as to the extent, or what platforms I use for my work. So in the past few months, I’ve received occasional calls from someone, with a strong Indian accent, claiming to represent “Windows Technical Support.” If I let them speak any further, they will claim to want to fix a problem with my Windows PC.

The odds that this scheme will work are high, since over 90% of their potential victims have Windows PCs, and people might be lulled into believing they are speaking with Microsoft. But what are they selling? On the surface, they claim that they want to fix a serious problem with your computer that you didn’t know about. To do that, they require direct remote access so they can take control. From here, they can infect your PC with a virus, or lock it and demand a ransom to fix it. Indeed, those ransoms can amount to several thousand dollars — all this to recover use of your computer.

People who aren’t gullible enough to fall for this scheme will usually just hang up. But, since someone is already disturbing my privacy, I usually prefer to disturb theirs. The easiest response is to just sell that I use a Mac and “not those crappy PCs.” As soon as I’m done talking, I will hear silence on the phone, but they will soon hang up.

On other occasions, I’ve posed a logical question: How they could possibly know what’s going on with my PC unless they hacked it? That also causes them to stop their spiel and hang up.

But the easiest comeback is when I announce that “there is no such thing as Windows Technical Support.”

Of course, you shouldn’t have to put up with such nonsense, and I don’t know whether such scams are perpetrated in other countries, and to what extent. But in the U.S. we have a system established by the Federal Trade Commission known as the Do Not Call Registry. In theory, if you put your phone numbers on their lists, you will no longer receive telemarketing calls.

That’s not entirely true, however. I have been listed since 2004 — and I confirmed that listing before writing this article. But that hasn’t stopped the calls; it’s just reduced them. However, if you still receive an unwanted phone sales pitch, you can file a complaint, and if enough are received, the FTC can go after the offender and fine them up to $16,000 for each offense. I am not at all certain how often this is done, but I suppose these criminal telemarketers can simply close up shop and reappear under a new business name with a new set of phone numbers. It has to be a cat and mouse game.

Yes, there are legitimate telemarketers. They are supposed to restrict their sales calls to people with whom they’ve already conducted business, or to numbers not listed on the Do Not Call Registry. So they would have to spend a fairly large sum of money to get ahold of those lists from the FTC to make sure they don’t call the wrong people, which is fine with me.

As to those fake computer technical support calls, I actually know one person who evidently fell for one of these scams. But he was a Mac user, and evidently had a problem with his email for which he needed help. I’m not sure where he found the firm, but I suspect he looked online for support companies.

Typical of such scammers, he had to cede control of his Mac to the online support people via remote access. At the end of the day, it cost him over $350 to service his $599 Mac mini, and I’m not altogether sure whether it was properly fixed. I offered to come to his home for a far smaller figure to straighten things out, but he took the cheap way out. He drove over to the nearest Apple store — just ten minutes away from his home — and had it done free. That’s what he should have done in the first place.

Fortunately, that support firm didn’t do any serious harm, other than to take his money. But that, to me, is more than enough to be suspicious of such enterprises even if they actually manage to fix a computer.